


the motion and the act

by bropunzeling



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, First Time, series-typical teen murder trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:27:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29193807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bropunzeling/pseuds/bropunzeling
Summary: It starts in the kitchen of their too-big house, on their empty street, when Peeta touches her elbow.
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Comments: 14
Kudos: 60





	the motion and the act

**Author's Note:**

> twitter's fault. no beta, we die like men. 
> 
> title from the hollow men by t.s. eliot.

It starts in the kitchen of their too-big house, on their empty street, when Peeta touches her elbow. “Katniss,” he says, stopping behind where Katniss is standing, in the doorway. 

She had meant to step out. It’s spring again; the primroses are blooming. Peeta’s touch is light on her arm, like she’s an eggshell about to crack.

“Oh,” she says, but she doesn’t move aside. When he steps past her, he brushes against her arm, setting a small patch of her on fire with something she doesn’t recognize. His smile is apologetic.

She stands there long after Peeta’s left through the other door. Her skin still burns.

-

That night they eat dinner together, chairs close at one end of a table meant for eight. He reaches for her empty glass to clear it, and their fingers touch.

They both freeze, the glass slipping from her fingers. It hits the table, cracks slightly. Katniss doesn’t know if she wants to move closer or away, so she stays where she is.

“Sorry,” Peeta says, even though she dropped the glass. His face is turning red, high on his cheeks. Katniss swallows, looks away, pulls her hand back. When she looks back, he and the glass are gone.

She doesn’t know how long it is until she gets up to find him. These days, time slips around her and she can’t keep track. The kitchen is empty, dishes drying. The room where Peeta keeps his paints is empty too. Katniss slides her gaze away from a half-finished canvas with the suggestion of dark hair and the curve of a bow. It feels too intimate to look at.

In the end, Peeta is in the garden, among the flowers. The light from the setting sun hits his hair, makes it burnished gold. Katniss has never been artistic, but she wishes she was like him, that she could take blobs of paint and record the way his hair looked, here, the width of his shoulders, there. That she could put down everything she sees and find it later, could hold the image in her hand. 

“It’s better out here,” he says, and she’s just able to keep herself from startling, but she can’t keep her heart from kicking in her chest. “Clearer.”

Katniss doesn’t say anything, just waits. They’re close enough that if she reached, she could touch his elbow, like he did in the kitchen. A step closer, and their fingers could touch. She aches, and is afraid.

“I remember,” he says, “that we were here, when we first came home from the Games. And the sun was like this, all these colors. And I kissed you. Real, or not real?”

She steps closer. “I –“ Her voice catches, a little. She’s not sure. “Not real.”

Peeta looks at her out of the corner of his eye. There’s a trace of a smile on his face, shading into a grimace. “It was too beautiful to be real, I guess.”

“Peeta,” she replies. If she reaches out, she could touch him. 

“I wish –“ he starts, and stops, abruptly.

His skin is warm under her palm. His lips are soft under her own.

Katniss doesn’t know what she’s doing. She’s done this – _they’ve_ done this – but it was a means to an end, then, a way to get medicine, a way to get out of one arena and then another, one of the many, many ways she knows how to not die, and how not let him die. She doesn’t know what it means to kiss him here, where there are no cameras to see her do it, when it is no longer a hopefully greater spectacle than dying.

Peeta seems to know, though. Peeta gasps when she touches him and turns to grab her arm. His hands are larger than hers, stronger too, and she can feel that strength circling around her wrist. He tilts his head so their noses don’t bang together, anchors her towards him, the heat of his body drawing her in. 

A crack bangs out from the woods. She jumps, her teeth catching on his lip.

“Sorry,” she says, pulling back to scan the woods. No guns, no ships. Nothing but a bird. When she looks back, his lower lip is bleeding, cracked down the middle. He touches it, looks at his fingertip, shiny and smeared red.

“Real, then,” he says.

-

He follows her to her bedroom. She can feel his gaze on her neck, little darts of attention, like he’s still not sure he can. Katniss isn’t sure either, part of her screaming inside about whether it’s a good idea, whether he means it, whether it’s safe, but a much larger part of her is burning up from the places where he’s touched her. The skin of her wrist throbs.

Inside the room she closes the door and latches it shut, then walks towards the bed. She takes off her jacket and shoes, and then looks over. Peeta is still standing by the door, watching her, mouth slightly open.

“Well?” she asks. Her voice cracks too badly to hide it.

“Katniss,” Peeta says, almost choking on it. He takes a step forward, freezes. His eyes flick away from her, scanning the walls, the window. “This isn’t –“

She reaches out, fists her hand in his shirt. “Peeta,” she says, and he makes a noise at the sound of his name, like he’s been punched. “Look at me.”

He drags his eyes away from the walls, finds hers. His pupils are blown out like he’s been hijacked. When she steps closer, he sucks in a breath.

“I’m touching you,” she says, voice thick in her mouth. She grabs his wrist with her free hand, holds it up to show him, to show them. Her fingers barely circle around it. 

Peeta nods, slowly. 

Katniss loosens her grip on his shirt, smooths out the fabric under her palm. She can almost feel his heart beating under her hand. “You’re here,” she says. Another nod. 

When she steps to him, their chests brush. It sends a bolt of something through her body, and she sucks in a breath. “Do you want –“

“Yes,” Peeta says, in a rush, and kisses her until she feels dizzy.

She loses track of time, kissing him. It seems to suck the air out of her lungs, making her light-headed. She stumbles, off balance, and opens her eyes to find him looking at her.

“We could,” she says, jerking her head towards her bed.

He nods.

She strips down quickly, leaving her clothes in a pile by the bed, until it’s just her underwear. When she looks up, Peeta is staring at her again. “This is happening,” he says, a little shocked again.

“Real,” she says, reaching to tug at his shirt, a foreign desperation making her clumsy. “It’s real, Peeta, come on –“ and he strips down too, so fast he nearly falls. 

He recovers quickly, scrambling onto the bed, hands tugging at her waist, her wrist. Eventually he maneuvers her over him so she’s straddling his lap. “Katniss,” he says, and she doesn’t know if she’ll ever know how to feel about the way her name sounds in his mouth, so she kisses him to stop thinking about it.

Katniss doesn’t know how long it is that they kiss, how long it is before heat collects low beneath her stomach. Time jerks forward, staticky. She blinks and Peeta has pushed her bra down. She blinks and her hips are grinding against his. She blinks and Peeta has one hand pulling at her hip and another twisting her nipple, making her curse. 

“Is this how it was?” he asks, panting below her, one hand gripping at her hip.

Katniss opens her eyes, stops moving. Her hair swings like a pendulum to rest. The effort of holding herself over him makes her arms shake. “How what was?”

“Before. We must have, before,” he says, and that sends a jolt of something sickening down her spine, curling around the desire in her stomach like a snake. “With the baby,” and oh, fuck.

Katniss has never been a good liar. She’s never been like Peeta, able to lie without thinking and with a smile on her face the entire time. Effie told her over and over that she was a terribly wooden actress, and here she is, stiff as a board, staring down into Peeta’s face and unable to read a single thing it says. His eyes are luminous, and she can’t look into their depths.

“We,” she starts. “We never – that –“

“It won’t be like that now,” Peeta says softly, bitter, mouth twisting into a grimace. The cut on his lip is starting to break open again, and she can see the red oozing out. “I’m not the same.”

“Peeta,” she says, his name breaking apart in her mouth until it chokes her. She swallows, hard. “I’m not the same either.”

He stares back at her, then reaches up with one hand, tracing along her cheek. It’s so much and not enough. “Do you care?” he asks. “That everything’s different?”

She shakes her head, slowly. She can’t trust herself to open her mouth. If he asks again, she can tell him properly. If he asks again, she can tell him it wasn’t real, it wasn’t real until it was –

He nods, and the hand on her cheek digs into her scalp, fingers tangling around her hair. “I don’t either,” and she’s tugged down, down, down.

When she kisses him, she tastes blood. 

She isn’t very graceful when she kicks off her underwear, her arms getting trapped in her bra. Peeta isn’t graceful either, tripping slightly, and it gives her time to look at him. It’s not like she’s never seen a naked man before, but it feels different now in a way she didn’t know to anticipate. He catches her looking, and she can feel her cheeks burning.

“What do you want?” Peeta asks, kneeling on the bed next to her. 

She doesn’t trust herself to speak without shaking. Instead, she pushes at his shoulders, until she’s back over him, hair falling like a curtain around their heads. 

“What do you want?” he asks again, more desperate. His hand smooths down her hip, fingers leaving trails in their wake.

“I want you to be here with me,” she says before she can stop herself.

He stares back at her, scanning her face, and she wonders what he’s looking for. Then he surges up and kisses her again, and she lets herself collapse onto her elbows, until there’s no space between their bodies.

For the first time, Katniss thinks she understands the appeal of – this. Kissing Peeta helps her mind clear, until all she can think about is the skin where she’s touching him, the taste of his mouth, the length of him pressing against her hipbone. The heat inside her grows and grows, sparking every time Peeta’s fingers sweep over her hip, along her thigh, to where she’s growing wet and aching.

“Peeta,” she mumbles against his mouth, gasping as his fingers touch a place that makes her clench on nothing before slipping inside of her. The feeling of them makes her mind buzz. She leans onto one of her elbows and reaches down with her free hand until she finds his cock. He makes a soft noise when she touches him, eyes fluttering. “Peeta, do you –“

“Yes,” he says, barely opening his eyes to look at her, flush high on his cheekbones. “Yes, whatever you –“

“Alright,” she says back. She sits up, hissing slightly at losing body heat, and then maneuvers herself onto her knees. 

It takes a minute, Peeta’s hands guiding her, to line herself up with him. It takes even longer to sink down, breathing in deep through her nose and trying to relax. Even when she starts moving, watching Peeta’s eyes slide shut, she’s wondering why anyone would do this, what about this is good, how this could ever be appealing –

Peeta shifts his hips, and oh.

“Oh,” she sighs, bracing a hand on Peeta’s chest. Her other hand finds Peeta’s wrist on the bed near his hip. If she grips hard enough, she could leave a bruise. She rolls her hips, trying to chase down – yes, there, that angle, that speed, making her clench up, making the heat inside her grow until she could burst on fire without a match.

“Katniss,” Peeta says, gasping. “Katniss, I’m – We should –“ His hand pushes at her hip, until she’s rolling onto her side, suddenly empty. He reaches down, fills her back up with his fingers. “Is this –“

She nods, not trusting herself to say anything, and tightens her grip on his wrist until she’s shuddering against his fingers, face tucked against his neck. She doesn’t let go when she reaches down with her free hand, just holds onto him as he comes in her palm with a gasp.

Time slips again while they lay there, heads tucked together, not looking at one another. Eventually she gets up, finds some dirty clothing and wipes her hand off. She checks that the door is latched; turns off the light.

When she crawls into bed, she curls up under the blankets, facing the window, away from Peeta. He rolls towards her, an arm falling over her waist. She can feel his nose against her neck.

“That didn’t happen,” she says, into the darkness. “The baby, the – all of that. We never – it was a lie you told, so maybe I wouldn’t die, and so maybe you wouldn’t die too. But this was – this was the first.”

She hears the shifting of sheets. Peeta’s breath is warm against her cheek; his voice rasps against her ear. “Oh,” he says, softly. His hand tightens on her hip.

His breathing evens out long before hers does.

-

She wakes up facing Peeta, foreheads and feet touching. She tries to keep still and match her breaths to his, long and slow and even.

When he wakes up, his eyes open slowly, then fly awake, like he’s startled. One hand reaches out and touches her face. There’s a bruise just below the knob of his wrist. “Katniss,” he says, as if afraid to finish the question.

“Real,” she tells him. His eyes slide shut.


End file.
